There’s been some grumbling about fans leaving Viejas Arena early at Wednesday night’s game against Boise State. And indeed, inside a minute to go in a three-point game, hundreds of folks in SDSU sweatshirts were heading for the exits like the Viejas fire alarm went off (again).

But were they actually going through the doors, or just waiting to make a mad dash for the seventh floor of the parking structure at the final buzzer? There’s a difference, and my guess is the latter.

I’m inclined to give fans a pass on this, for a couple reasons. Trying to get home from Viejas with 12,414 of your closest friends is no picnic – I’ve heard stories of people sitting in traffic for 45 minutes or longer. And it was a weeknight. And it was an 8 p.m. tip. And people actually still have jobs in this recession that they’d like to keep.

Instead, turn your ire toward the Mountain West and television. In the wake of The Mtn folding, the conference sold its leftover basketball games this season to all-takers for whatever spare change they could scrape together under the car seat. That includes Time Warner Cable SportsNet, which bought a bunch of games and then realized, oh wait, we might have conflicting programming.

That’s why you see 8 and 8:30 p.m. PDT tips this season, either because they don’t want to pre-empt their hourlong postgame show for a sub-.500 NBA team based in Los Angeles or because, in the case of Wednesday, they also were showing UNLV-Fresno State at 6 p.m.

The reality: The Mountain West, as good as it is on the court this season, doesn’t have the juice or the financial reserves to tell a start-up regional TV network that weeknight games that aren’t bringing in six-figure revenues shouldn’t start later than, say, 7 or 7:30. The schools and student-athletes and fans had zero say in the decision. The schools were just emailed a schedule from the league, which was just emailed a schedule from the broadcasters.

Worst part about being a sports writer: You have to stick around for a couple hours after a game and write a story.